The McCain campaign has unveiled two ads in four days, both with the same false claim. The ad from late last week insisted that Barack Obama “voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000.” Yesterday, McCain’s campaign argued that one of the “perks” of joining the Obama “fan club” is “a tax increase for everyone earning more than $42,000 a year.”
The McCain campaign, as it surely knows, is blatantly lying. But as long as McCain’s gang feels compelled to keep repeating the lie, we might as well go to the trouble of explaining why it’s wrong.
Oddly enough, it was none other than Fox News’ Chris Wallace, interviewing McCain campaign manager Rick Davis on Sunday, who helped expose the charade.
NARRATOR: Life in the spotlight must be grand. But for the rest of us, times are tough. Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Mr. Davis, especially that last sentence, isn’t that misleading?
DAVIS: Nothing misleading about it. Barack Obama voted for a budget resolution that would have increased taxes on people, families, making $42,000. What’s misleading about that?
WALLACE: Well, in fact, it only would be single people making $42,000. It would be families making over $60,000. But Obama — as you say, he voted for a non-binding budget resolution that overall talked about doing away with the Bush tax cuts.
In fact, he says, that’s not his tax plan, that he supports a middle-class tax cut. And I want to put something up on the screen. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center says someone making $37,000 a year under Obama’s plan would get a tax cut of $892. Under McCain’s plan, they get a tax cut of $113.
The point, obviously, is to give voters the impression that if Obama’s elected, anyone who makes more than $42,000 — up until fairly recently, the McCain campaign had said $32,000 — should expect a tax increase.
But there’s that pesky reality. Obama didn’t vote to raise taxes on those making $42,000, it’s not part of his economic plan, and he would actually offer a bigger tax break to the middle class than McCain would.
Not that reality matters, of course, I just like to set the record straight.
It’s generally hit or miss, but FactCheck.org got this one right.
The measure Obama supported contained a provision – which is not part of his current tax proposals – that would have increased the rate paid by those who have taxable income high enough to fall into the 25 percent tax bracket. The 25 percent rate would have increased to 28 percent, as it was before the Bush tax cuts. The effect would have been to increase taxes for a single taxpayer with as little as $32,550 in taxable income in 2008, after all deductions and exclusions from total annual earnings.
But that works out to be $41,500 a year in total income for a single taxpayer with no dependents who takes the standard deduction and exemption allowed by the tax code. So it’s true that a single taxpayer making $42,000 this year would see an income tax increase – of $15. That assumes the provision Obama voted for had been enacted and assumes further that the taxpayer did not qualify for more than the standard deduction.
But the McCain ad misleads with a strong visual message. The $42,000 claim is true for a lone taxpayer, but it is not true for the woman who is pictured in the ad while the announcer is speaking. She’s reading to two small children, apparently her own. If she is supposed to be a single mother of two, then she would be able to make as much as $62,150 in total income in 2008 without being affected by the measure Obama once supported. She would file as a “head of household” with more generous tax brackets and standard deductions than for a single filer, and she would also qualify for exemptions for herself and her two children. (She would also qualify for a $1,000 credit for each child, since they both are obviously under 17, but this would be true whether or not the 25 percent bracket had been increased to 28 percent.)
Furthermore, if viewers are to believe that the woman in McCain’s ad is married and files taxes jointly with her husband, the couple could make as much as $90,000 this year without being affected. And anyway, as noted earlier, Obama isn’t proposing to implement any such increase in the 25 percent bracket. […]
The TV ad also says that Obama “promises more taxes on small business, seniors, your life savings, your family.” This statement is simply not true for the vast majority of viewers who will see it. Obama
, in fact, promises to deliver a $1,000 tax cut for families making up to $150,000 a year, and he says he would increase income tax rates, capital gains tax rates and taxes on dividends only for those with family incomes over $250,000 a year, or for single taxpayers making over $200,000.
Now you know. Tell your friends.